Keystone Condo Rental - Slope Side 3BR/3BA - Keystone Colorado - Dude

Random photos from around Keystone Ski Resort courtsey of your KeystoneRental.net web staff (as if!). All these were taken by me (Butch Leitz) on Monday December 17th 2007.


	Labonte's Cabin at the bottom of North Peak: BBQ and restrooms, and the best "beach" at Keystone. "Beach" - for the uninformed - is a relaxed outdoor seating area where you can listen to tunes pumped out on loudspeakers, sip your favorite beverage, and watch newbies crash into "slow" signs at the bottom of Mozart! Ahh - it doesn't get much better than this!

	Summit House - at the top of Dercum Mountain - this is a combination bar, restaurant & relaxation station at the top of the first mountain here at Keystone. The food is ok but typically resort-pricey. The summit here is 11,000 something feet. The highest point at Keystone is above one of the other two ski mountains here and is 12,408 feet. You can hike or snow-cat up to the top for access to major bowl skiing!

	This is the River Run base area. The trail "River Run" is what I was on taking this picture, so you can see - there's a wee bit of a drop coming in off the mountain! Unlike Mountain House, there's no lodge thing right by the base area, but just the gondola and chairlift. You walk about 50 yards or so to get into The Village at River Run where there are restaurants, boutiques, stores, rentals, yadda yadda yadda... THIS JUST IN, 12/2007: Keystone has just announced that the Gondola will be relocated for the 2008-2009 season so the base of the gondola will be located right in the central part of River Run. We'll have to see a map of exactly where, but this is a very positive step. The thing I hated most about River Run was the long walk, AND the fact that you had to go all the way to the top of the mountain from River Run. NOW - when they change the location of the base terminal, they're changing the cars to 8 person cars with floor to ceiling glass AND building a half-way terminal for access to mid-mountain runs!

	This is where all the lifts from River Run and Mountain House come in. Mountain House doesn't have a lift that comes to the summit directly - you have to take the Peru lift (located straight out from our condo) up to where it desposits you on mid-Schoolmarm just at the top of Area 51, then you ski down to the Montezuma lift which does take you up the rest of the way to the top. Thats Montezuma coming in on left, with the Gondola from River Run coming in next it, and out of the picture (but to the right) is the chairlift that mirrors the Gondola from River Run (full of freezing people who thought riding the chair would be better than waiting in line for the Gondola!).

	Riding the Peru lift from Mountain House, you go right over parts of Area 51 - voted one of the Top-10 Terrain Parks in North America. They have gotten some boxes and rails out, but the thing I wanted to show here is that they've got a nice series of jumps set up (this is one of three or four runs in Area 51 - you can see snow making off to the right at the next Area 51 run). (I just realized this photo looked alot better full-size than reduced to fit here. Right even with the chair ahead of me is one of about 4 jumps that are built up right in a row. Plus, look a little down from that and that red box feature has a person wiping out just below it!)

	This is Mountain House, one of two base areas at Keystone along with River Run. (There's another little village area called Lakeside but it's not directly on the mountain with lifts). In here, there's a buffet-type Restaraunt, pizza, coffee store, a retail store for clothes, lockers you can rent, bathrooms, and a rental location (either directly inside or right next door). When my family first started going to Keystone, we practically lived here! We'd bring sandwich fixins' from home and sit out on that deck up there having lunch in sunshine or snow storms (no kidding)! This was taken around 2:00 on a monday and it's still a tad early in the season - that and the wide-angle shot make the place look deserted, (and it wasn't) but I had to take about 5 shots to get this without somebody skiing in front of me! Usually during weekends there's quite alot of activity out here. During many events they set up tents out here with equipment vendors showing off new boards or skis, have more ski racks out, and it's general mayhem!

before after	If you saw my blog entry right before Thanksgiving that lead to a special page called "Dude - Where's My Mountain", this "before" picture was listed there showing the magic carpet on the bunny hill high and dry. I made the comment that it's built about three feet up to be flush with where the snow usually is (and it wasn't then). Compare this to the "after" picture which shows what a couple weeks of snow and cold temps and snow making can do for you!

	Here's the walkway from our Condo to the lifts - you can see we have some snow sitting around. (Don't let the wide angle fool you - that's the Argentine lift straight ahead across the walkway in the distance - but only about 60 feet away!)